When I saw the character of Rasheeda in Chi-raq (one of Lysistrata’s companions), I knew she was familiar. It was only after I looked Chi-raq’s cast up that I realized where I had seen the face. Anya Engel-Adams and Spike Lee had collaborated before, on NBA 2k16’s My Career storyline, Livin’ Da Dream. The video game has a mode where players can play out the lives of an up and coming NBA star. For the 2016 version of the game, 2k brought Spike Lee onto the team to enhance the storyline of the game mode.

Compared to the other movies we’ve watched thus far, Inside Job seems only tangentially related to issues of race and racism in America. Of course, this is not quite true. Inside Job is a Spike Lee film, after all. But Lee’s discussion of race is much more subtle. It does not take center stage. Instead, race comes up in the small interactions, away from the gunfire and the guns. It occurs, for instance, during interactions between the white Ms. White and the black Detective Frazier, in which Ms. White threatens Frazier’s job and reputation, and Frazier responds by telling Ms. White to “kiss my black ass.” Racism also rears its head when there is a Seikh who is automatically considered more suspicious because of the turban he wears.

Oscar Micheaux is credited as the first African American film director. He was part of a movement in film, which was called ‘race films’, a somewhat condescending and reducing title for an ambitious and formidable school of film. Micheaux’s films stand alone as race films that actually dealt with issues of race and in … Continue reading →

We’ve all heard this phrase used in earnest before. It’s supposed to downplay or excuse something racist said by a white person by demonstrating their personal affinity for black people. It is meaningless and an extension of the racism expressed in their previous statement that they are now trying to cover up with the excuse … Continue reading →

Spike Lee has a firm place in the debate of the obligation of the black artist. Lee sits as an unwavering force in this discussion because he is a black artist making art about black people for black people at an unprecedented scale with an unprecedented audience. Get on the Bus, for several reasons, … Continue reading →

In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon addresses the appearance of blackness in black men and what it means to validate your black, male appearance. In lieu with that the idea that seeing black males, evoked memories of violence and following, feelings of fear in white people, I believe that there would have been an effort to […]

When I first watched Get on the Bus, I laughed out loud when I saw Isaiah Washington’s character. The laughter come from a place of being confused about his identity as a black gay republican and a vague memory of watching Grey’s Anatomy when I was in middle school. I found it interesting that in […]

This essay, by Bill Benzon, is one of the most sophisticated readings of Mo’Better Blues. I found it very resourceful for my final project. In this essay, he discusses; The Cultural Psychodynamics of Racism Discipline of Jazz: From Nature to Culture Destructiveness and Creativity: The Albatross of Romanticism The Blues in the Night Jazz as […]

TW: Sexual Assault The two aspects of School Daze that really rubbed me the wrong way were its handling of queer issues and its handling of sexual assault. In School Daze, Lee sought to portray HBCU life in all of its complexities. However, in doing so, I feel he used the issue of sexual violence and gay identity […]

As I mentioned in my last blog, I really wanted to do a film analysis of When the Levees Broke, but since I wasn’t sure how to go about it, I looked up some guidelines from a few websites. This film analysis website had the easiest step-by-step guideline, so I’ll be using it for my blog, but I’ll […]

I found Spike Lee’s 1996 film Get on the Bus to be an interesting, although not satisfying, look at Black American masculinity in its multitude of forms in the mid-1990s. One aspect of the movie that stuck out most for me was the depiction of queer (in this case, gay or MSM) identity. I was particularly […]